The world’s largest buyers of Brazilian soy have announced a plan to exit from a landmark antideforestation agreement, the Amazon Soy Moratorium. The voluntary agreement between soy agribusinesses and industry associations prevented most soy linked to deforestation from entering global supply chains for nearly two decades.
The decision was communicated on Dec. 25, just before a new state tax law in Mato Grosso, Brazil’s biggest soy-producing state, went into effect on January 1st. The law eliminates tax breaks and access to public land for any companies that were signatories to the moratorium.
The Brazilian Association of Vegetable Oil Industries, known as ABIOVE, notified civil society groups that it would withdrawing from the voluntary pact, which is expected to take 30 days to go into effect.
“It is a setback that practically pushes us back 15 to 20 years,” Mauricio Voivodic, executive director at WWF-Brasil, told Mongabay by phone.
In the words of Philip Wollen, we don’t have to bomb it; we can just stop buying it. The animal cruelty industry drives the expansion of soya plantations in the Amazon. Live vegan and grow your own veganic permaculture food forest using syntropic agriculture methods.